What is the analysis of the presence of nature in "The Grasshopper and the Cricket" by John Keats?I woudl like to know what Keat means by the use...

In "The Grasshopper and the Cricket" Keats uses nature
imagery to paint a two-sided picture of life on earth. The first is a direct description
of how human life observes and intersects with nature on earth (of course Keats never
speaks of "nature," he only speaks of the things belonging to nature: birds, trees,
crickets, grass, etc.).

The first and direct story told by
the poem is that in summer, when the birds faint from the heat of the sun, they take
shelter under the cool leaves of trees and listen to the grasshopper as he sings and
plays about the meadow. When the grasshopper is finished playing , he reposes himself in
the cool of a weed. This is observed by humans.

Then in
winter, nature intersects with humans. While the world is frosted in cold, a cricket
sings from the warm stove. The human listener, in half a doze, is reminded of the luxury
of summer verdure and imagines he hears the sound of the
grasshopper.

For Keats, as a poet of romanticism, nature
communicated through symbolic emblems, which poets copied by making symbolism highly
important in their poetry. The second story is a metaphorical one. The hot sun and
summer luxury symbolize youth and health. The frosty cold winter during which the
imagination (for the Romantics, imagination was the highest order of thought that
governed cognitive reason) recalls the youth and health of
summer.

In this context, nature as a whole is emblematic of
the individual joys and pleasures of a life lived through all the seasons of all the
years and through the metaphoric seasons of lifetime.

Bear
in mind that in 1816 (the year Keats received his apothecary license) when Keats wrote
this poem, he had already lost his father and mother, who died of tuberculosis, and was
nursing his brother Tom who was also dying of tuberculosis. This is when Keats
contracted the disease that also led to his untimely death in
1821.